VOGONS


Reply 1920 of 4586, by peido

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King_Corduroy wrote:

I also found TWO toshiba laptops from the 90's with Lithium Ion batteries! So far the older of the two has taken a charge and operates off the battery fully. 😁

Nice find. You should check the BIOS batteries. I recently bought 2 Toshiba laptops and found them leaking, one of the laptops doesn't work due to that.

Reply 1921 of 4586, by CelGen

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Another strange BCM brand device with a "Whizpro" BIOS has surfaced in the trash.

CGS_8033.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsa … ed/CGS_8033.jpg

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http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsa … ed/CGS_8034.jpg

The previous one a socket 370 board that was older than this one) I nailed together that BCM, Whizpro and Gtech are all something to do with lottery machines or kiosks. That LCD screen touts an ELO touchscreen on an internal serial port and there is a barcode reader on the underside. In fact the BIOS reports there are no less than six serial ports present in the machine. It all hangs off a rather heavy duty mount of some sort. Has all the usual I/O fixings and peripheral interfaces and the riser card for PCI has solder pads for one ISA slot. There's also oddly a Mini-PCI slot on the motherboard. 😕

The BIOS like the other one is locked and a battery pull does not clear it. Likewise the manual for the motherboard does not appear to be available online so no idea where the CMOS clear jumper might be. 🙁

emot-science.gif "It's science. I ain't gotta explain sh*t" emot-girl.gif

Reply 1922 of 4586, by Repo Man11

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I recently found a pallet by a dumpster with some old printers, a NAD stereo receiver (something I would have killed for back in the 80s, but now I left it where it was), and a couple of PCs. One is a Compaq mini PC, with the drives removed, motherboard still there, but no memory. It takes an external power supply like a laptop. It might fire up if I add some memory and power, but I mostly snagged it because it still has a Windows 7 Pro COA on the side.
But the real find was a micro ATX case with an Asus M2NPV-VM AM2+ motherboard, GeForce 210 PCIe card, a 5600+ with a copper heat pipe cooler, and four gigs of DDR2. I plugged it in, and it fired right up! The IDE DVDRW works fine, so I tossed in a hard drive and installed Windows with no issues. It already had the beta BIOS update that supports AM3 CPUs, and I had an AM3 240 in my drawer because I upgrade my mother's machine to a quad core, and it works fine. The only problem I've found with it is that the rear sound port doesn't work, though the front one does.

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 1923 of 4586, by TheAbandonwareGuy

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CelGen wrote:
Another strange BCM brand device with a "Whizpro" BIOS has surfaced in the trash. […]
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Another strange BCM brand device with a "Whizpro" BIOS has surfaced in the trash.

CGS_8033.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsa … ed/CGS_8033.jpg

CGS_8034.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsa … ed/CGS_8034.jpg

The previous one a socket 370 board that was older than this one) I nailed together that BCM, Whizpro and Gtech are all something to do with lottery machines or kiosks. That LCD screen touts an ELO touchscreen on an internal serial port and there is a barcode reader on the underside. In fact the BIOS reports there are no less than six serial ports present in the machine. It all hangs off a rather heavy duty mount of some sort. Has all the usual I/O fixings and peripheral interfaces and the riser card for PCI has solder pads for one ISA slot. There's also oddly a Mini-PCI slot on the motherboard. 😕

The BIOS like the other one is locked and a battery pull does not clear it. Likewise the manual for the motherboard does not appear to be available online so no idea where the CMOS clear jumper might be. 🙁

Well that's an abomination if I ever have seen one. All jokes aside it looks like it was probably a testing board for testing laptop stuff on a real mobile chipset.

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Reply 1924 of 4586, by xjas

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Scored this cute Zenith VGA green-screen a couple weeks ago. Apparently it was part of the equipment used to run a large astronomical telescope that was being upgraded. That probably saved it from screen burn as it would've been flicked off when not in use. Seems to max out at 480 lines @ 60Hz, true oldschool VGA.

I can't find a model number on it anywhere; would love to know what it originally came with. Here it is next to my biggest (PC) CRT, for comparison:

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Hope my choice of on-screen graphics is suitable. 😜 Incidentally it was being driven by a PowerMac G5 in the photo, possibly the most powerful thing it's ever been connected to. Navigating OS/X in 640x480 is painful.

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Reply 1925 of 4586, by yawetaG

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Okay, it's not hardware per se, but today I scooped an old Pascal manual and a Windows 95 manual with OEM license sticker out of the box of books my boss was throwing out...crossing my fingers he might also still have old discs and hardware laying about...

Reply 1926 of 4586, by Skyscraper

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Yesterday morning I found this Denon AVR-1800 in the local electronic waste bin.

Except for this receiver the electronic waste bin was totally empty and the poor Denon had been trown in front first and were still resting against one of the inner sides of the bin, front down. Luckily the current bin is made of plastic and the knobs somehow seems to have survived the fall.

The Denon AVR-1800 is model year 2000 but was released sometime in the second half of 1999, it seems well built with a large transformer. Using this unit as an AV amp today would be less than optimal but it should be decent as a stereo amp. The specs are pretty good, 2*75W 8 ohm 20Hz - 20kHz with less than 0.05% THD, 2x110W 6 ohm <0.7% THD and a SNR ratio of 102DB on the line inputs. Also 5*75W 8 ohm but probably not with all channels driven...

I have only tested the unit for a couple of hours while painting the walls in one of the rooms in my apartment but it seems to work just fine.

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Reply 1927 of 4586, by ODwilly

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Friend was throwing out an old Dell Dimension 4600 so I scooped it up. He said it was a real slug before the hard drive died. Upon closer inspection I believe it!

2.4ghz 533fsb Northwood, 256mb of DDR256 (single stick) and a GeForce fx 5200. Combined with about 6 inches of dust in the case. . .this poor PC.

Don't need another P4 so kinda considering scooping out the guts and transplanting a Core2Quad system in it's place.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 1928 of 4586, by LHN91

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Skyscraper wrote:
Yesterday morning I found this Denon AVR-1800 in the local electronic waste bin. […]
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Yesterday morning I found this Denon AVR-1800 in the local electronic waste bin.

Except for this receiver the electronic waste bin was totally empty and the poor Denon had been trown in front first and were still resting against one of the inner sides of the bin, front down. Luckily the current bin is made of plastic and the knobs somehow seems to have survived the fall.

The Denon AVR-1800 is model year 2000 but was released sometime in the second half of 1999, it seems well built with a large transformer. Using this unit as an AV amp today would be less than optimal but it should be decent as a stereo amp. The specs are pretty good, 2*75W 8 ohm 20Hz - 20kHz with less than 0.05% THD, 2x110W 6 ohm <0.7% THD and a SNR ratio of 102DB on the line inputs. Also 5*75W 8 ohm but probably not with all channels driven...

I have only tested the unit for a couple of hours while painting the walls in one of the rooms in my apartment but it seems to work just fine.

Denon AVR-1800 dumpster find.jpg

Denon seems to make good stuff, and that one looks pretty sweet. I'd use that any day for an office or games room receiver.

Reply 1929 of 4586, by cyclone3d

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ODwilly wrote:

Friend was throwing out an old Dell Dimension 4600 so I scooped it up. He said it was a real slug before the hard drive died. Upon closer inspection I believe it!

2.4ghz 533fsb Northwood, 256mb of DDR256 (single stick) and a GeForce fx 5200. Combined with about 6 inches of dust in the case. . .this poor PC.

Don't need another P4 so kinda considering scooping out the guts and transplanting a Core2Quad system in it's place.

Which way is the exhaust fan pointing?

Almost every single one of those 4600's that I worked on under warranty had the exhaust fan blowing the hot air from the CPU heatsink into the case instead of exhausting it.

It would cause problems from overheating and thermal throttling to frying the RAM and even the motherboard or HDD.

I can almost guarantee that the thermal compound has also separated and/or dried up which also causes overheating and thus the CPU to throttle.

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Reply 1930 of 4586, by amadeus777999

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xjas wrote:
Scored this cute Zenith VGA green-screen a couple weeks ago. Apparently it was part of the equipment used to run a large astrono […]
Show full quote

Scored this cute Zenith VGA green-screen a couple weeks ago. Apparently it was part of the equipment used to run a large astronomical telescope that was being upgraded. That probably saved it from screen burn as it would've been flicked off when not in use. Seems to max out at 480 lines @ 60Hz, true oldschool VGA.

I can't find a model number on it anywhere; would love to know what it originally came with. Here it is next to my biggest (PC) CRT, for comparison:

zenith2.jpg
zenith1.jpg

Hope my choice of on-screen graphics is suitable. 😜 Incidentally it was being driven by a PowerMac G5 in the photo, possibly the most powerful thing it's ever been connected to. Navigating OS/X in 640x480 is painful.

Awesome!
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Reply 1931 of 4586, by ODwilly

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cyclone3d wrote:
Which way is the exhaust fan pointing? […]
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Which way is the exhaust fan pointing?

Almost every single one of those 4600's that I worked on under warranty had the exhaust fan blowing the hot air from the CPU heatsink into the case instead of exhausting it.

It would cause problems from overheating and thermal throttling to frying the RAM and even the motherboard or HDD.

I can almost guarantee that the thermal compound has also separated and/or dried up which also causes overheating and thus the CPU to throttle.

The thermal paste is dry as heck, I will have to check the exhaust fan, that is hilarious. Would explain the dust!

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 1932 of 4586, by Repo Man11

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My latest Craigslist Free score. This was listed last Friday, and I was sure it would be gone already ("Out on the front porch, don't bother the tenants") so I didn't bother to make the drive. The ad was up all weekend, but I thought about the drive, and how it would be waste of time. But it was still up this morning, so I made note of the address. Coincidentally, my first job of the day was nearby, so I stopped by afterward. It was still on the porch so I grabbed it. Asus P5N-E SLI, E6300, EVGA 8400GS, no memory, SATA DVDROM, a Silverstone 500 watt PSU (never heard of them before, but it has good reviews) and on old Lian Li case. Sadly the case is basically junk since it is missing a side panel and has no hand drive mounting hardware.

I blew the dust out and put in a stick of DDR2, and it posted!

2d15vnl.jpg

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 1933 of 4586, by SW-SSG

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^Is it just me, or is 80% of the PSU fan inlet blocked by that metal thing??

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Silverstone power supplies are well-regarded indeed, but I'd feel nervous about re-using any PSU that was likely running at artificially-elevated temperatures for long periods of time.

Reply 1934 of 4586, by bjwil1991

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It ain't just you. If there are holes drilled underneath the other 80%, it'll have better air flow, I think.

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Reply 1935 of 4586, by Repo Man11

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SW-SSG wrote:

^Is it just me, or is 80% of the PSU fan inlet blocked by that metal thing??

airblock.png

Silverstone power supplies are well-regarded indeed, but I'd feel nervous about re-using any PSU that was likely running at artificially-elevated temperatures for long periods of time.

The bottom panel is swiss cheesed, so there was no issue with airflow. My guess is the case design predates power supplies with bottom mount cooling fans, so when they came along they just updated the PSU holder with holes for airlflow

In April of 2007, I put a system together for my then boss based on one of these boards, upgrading from his Socket A system. Just over a thousand dollars worth of stuff right there.

v4mh5x.jpg

In 2011 or so, it was time for him to update again, and I advised him to just buy a whole new system since it was also time to move to Windows 7. I ended up with his old system after doing some work for him, and I used the board to replace the dead motherboard in my cousin's boyfriend's computer. He was supposed to pay me $100.00 for the parts and labor, but he never did. I gifted the Q9505 that was in it to another cousin.

One good thing about this board is that it works with the inexpensive high density DDR2 that will not work with Intel chipsets. Sadly, it's chipset limited to eight gigs of memory.

Added four gigs of DDR2, a 500 gigabyte hard drive, and two SATA cables and installed Windows 8 with no issues.

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 1936 of 4586, by Intel486dx33

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Repo Man11 wrote:
My latest Craigslist Free score. This was listed last Friday, and I was sure it would be gone already ("Out on the front porch, […]
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My latest Craigslist Free score. This was listed last Friday, and I was sure it would be gone already ("Out on the front porch, don't bother the tenants") so I didn't bother to make the drive. The ad was up all weekend, but I thought about the drive, and how it would be waste of time. But it was still up this morning, so I made note of the address. Coincidentally, my first job of the day was nearby, so I stopped by afterward. It was still on the porch so I grabbed it. Asus P5N-E SLI, E6300, EVGA 8400GS, no memory, SATA DVDROM, a Silverstone 500 watt PSU (never heard of them before, but it has good reviews) and on old Lian Li case. Sadly the case is basically junk since it is missing a side panel and has no hand drive mounting hardware.

I blew the dust out and put in a stick of DDR2, and it posted!

2d15vnl.jpg

I have one of those motherboards with Core2quad CPU and 8gb of Nvidia SLI ram.
Came with a pair of GT8800's really nice cards.

The only problem was the caps on the mobo had gone bad. Check your capacitors.

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Reply 1937 of 4586, by Repo Man11

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I have one of those motherboards with Core2quad CPU and 8gb of Nvidia SLI ram.
Came with a pair of GT8800's really nice cards.

The only problem was the caps on the mobo had gone bad. Check your capacitors.

The caps all look good, and it loaded 8.1 with no issues. I think I'll try a Xeon in it. I've seen more than one report of it working in this board, found a modified BIOS that has the CPU microcode installed, and you can buy one that will drop in from AliExpress for $15.00 shipped. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Close-to-Core … .3d7018edCf9vmS

I just noticed that this board has never had the BIOS updated and still has the initial release from January of 2007!

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 1938 of 4586, by King_Corduroy

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Hey guys I found two Compaq computers! I desperately need some drivers for the easy access control type things on the 4402 though.

First up is the 1998 Compaq Presario 2255.
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and then just yesterday I found a 1996 Compaq Presario 4402!

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Cool eh? Well it would be if I didn't need some weird Compaq drivers, the 4402 is nearly working properly but I'm having some weird sound issue that seems to be connected to one of the unknown devices. I'm guessing it's the controls on the front of the machine fucking things up. Also have a small other problem with the CRT going out of focus as the machine heats up. 😒

Anyone who can help with the driver situation would be greatly appreciated! 😁

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